In today’s episode, I’m sharing five essential money moves to help you take control of your finances in 2025. These simple yet powerful strategies will give you a clearer picture of how money flows in and out of your bank account, allowing you to budget with real numbers. Prioritizing these money moves can make a huge difference in reaching your financial goals.
I’ll walk you through the techniques I use with my clients so you can maximize your income, save more efficiently, and set yourself up for success in 2025. Whether you’re trying to get your finances in better shape or simply want to be more intentional about where your money goes, this episode is for you. These tips are relevant regardless of where you are in your financial journey!
Let’s make sure this year is the one where your money truly starts working for you. Tune in to learn the five money moves you need to make in 2025…
- [00:36] Check your pay stub
- [06:11] Increase retirement contributions
- [11:03] Open a high-yield savings account
- [13:45] Check your tax withholdings
- [15:54] Negotiate and price shop key expenses
Tune into this episode of Money Files to learn 5 money moves that will help you regain control of your finances in 2025.
Are you ready to start asking for help with your finances? Apply to work with me, and let’s start working towards your financial goals.
If you loved the discussion about 5 essential money moves, check out my episode, Paycheck Series: Build the Habit of Checking Your Pay Stub!
Transcript for “5 New Year Money Moves to Take Control of Your Finances in 2025”
Intro: Hi and welcome to Money Files. I’m Keina Newell from Wealth Over Now. I work everyday with professional women and solopreneurs to help them get out of financial overwhelm and shame so they can experience more flexibility and ease with their finances. Are you ready to gain confidence and learn to manage your finances intentionally? Tune in and grab financial tips that will help you master the way you think about and manage your finances.
Keina: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Money File. So we’re still in the new year and I wanted to give you five New Year’s money moves as you continue to get your finances together. And I think these are things that you can do to make sure that you are doing the things that you want to be doing with your money. I’m all about making sure that you are eliminating fake math and that we are using real numbers so that you can make real progress this year. So the first money move that I want you to make this year, is I want you to check your pay stub. I think this is one of the most overlooked opportunities that happens with my clients all the time. You’re used to your paycheck dropping in your account on the 15th and the 30th, or every other Friday, every other Wednesday, whatever that looks like.
But I have a lot of clients that don’t actually look at their pay stub, especially because we live in a world where you don’t get a paper check anymore, like you don’t actually look at your pay stub, you have to log into ADP or you have to log into some type of portal to actually see your pay stub. And I cannot express to you how valuable it is to actually look at your pay stub. When I am working with clients you would be surprised at how often I’m like, why’d your paycheck change? And my clients haven’t realized that their paychecks have changed. But I will tell you, after working with me, they start paying attention. And it could be a number of different reasons that your paycheck changes. But these are questions that I want you to be asking because it’s a part of knowing your numbers and not just trusting that the amount that’s been auto deposited into your account is correct, because it may not be correct.
At the beginning of the year the most common reasons that our pay stubs can change is we may have received an increase in our pay. It might be that there’s a change in how much you are paying for benefits. So like your healthcare, your dental, your FSA contributions, your HSA contributions, your dependent care contributions. And also if you are someone who earns over $170,000, then you might also be impacted by social security taxes because after a certain amount, they stop making you contribute to social security tax because you’ve hit the threshold. So these are all reasons why your paycheck could fluctuate at the beginning of the year or even at the end of the year. So as we start 2025 and especially because we’re a couple of pay cycles in, I generally say that we should check like the second, third, and fourth paycheck of the new year because things can still be settling down, like your first paycheck of the beginning of the year might actually be from the 2024 fiscal year.
So you may not see what you think you would see in your paycheck. So that’s why I usually suggest that we check the second, the third and the fourth to make sure that the trends that we see are accurate trends. So when you’re checking your pay stub, I want you to look at your pay stub and let’s make sure that the net amount you see is the net amount that you expect to see. So your net amount is how much money you get after your contributions have been taken out, your taxes have been taken out. I want you to compare that and make sure that your budget actually matches that net amount. If you find that you have more money, we want to make sure that we’re allocating where that more money is going.
If you find that you have less money, you want to make sure that you adjust your budget for less. I would also want you to know why is your paycheck more and why is your paycheck less? Make sure that you can answer those questions. If you agree that your paycheck should be less, move on. If you agree that your paycheck should be more move on. But if you don’t know why your paycheck is more, or you don’t know why your paycheck is less, I want you to check into those things. If you are someone who makes over $176,000 in the year 2025, you are someone who towards the end of the year, you’re going to see that your paycheck actually ticks up a little bit. Your social security taxes are only going to be on the first $176,100. So after you cross that threshold for your gross income, you’ll see a shift in how much money they actually take out for social security taxes.
So that would be a really, really big reason for why at the beginning of the year, your paycheck looks lower than it does at the end of the year. Something else that I want you to look at when you’re looking at your pay stub, if you had changes to your retirement contributions, if you made changes to your healthcare plan, if you made changes to how much you’re contributing to your HSA or FSA, make sure that you agree with the dollar amount that they’re taking out. So if you, with your FSA went from contributing $1000 to $2,000, just make sure that those numbers match up. If you take that amount and you multiply it by the number of pay periods that you have, we want to make sure that the math makes sense. Remember, computers make errors. Your job can also make an error. And so I want you to be on top of your numbers and not just be trusting the systems that we have in place that your job puts into place.
If you look at your pay stub and you’re like, I have no idea why my paycheck is so much different from the end of 2024 to the beginning of 2025, that’s a really great opportunity to contact your HR representative and ask them to walk you through the fluctuations in your pay stub. That’s one of my assignments that I give to a lot of my clients where I’m like, Hey, these are the numbers that I see changing. Please talk to your HR rep and ask them why these things might be changing. So that’s money move number one.
Money move Number two, I want you to increase your retirement contributions. This year at the top of 2025, the new limits for your 401k contributions are 23,500. Last year they were 23,000. So if you’re someone who is maxing out your retirement at work, you want to know that there’s 500 extra dollars on the table for you to take advantage of. So make sure that whatever percentage of your paycheck you’re contributing, you’re hitting that amount. The Roth IRA actually stayed the same, so it’s at $7,000 still. Same with IRAs. So you don’t need to do anything there. But at the beginning of this year, it’s just a great opportunity to increase your contributions by 1%. I think it’s the easiest, easiest life hack, especially when you’re working towards contributing more to your retirement, like you’re not going to miss the 1%. But also, if you do increase your retirement contributions by 1%, give your paycheck, maybe two cycles, go back, look at your pay stub because you want to adjust your paycheck because your paycheck’s going to be a little bit less with that increase.
Since we’re also talking about your retirement contributions, I want you to know, here’s a question that I’m going to ask you to ask your HR. See when you get vested in your retirement at work, when I worked as a teacher in a charter school, it took us three years to get vested. And that’s an important number to know because we don’t want to leave money on the table. So when you get vested into your retirement, what that means is if your company makes contributions or if you have a match that your company gives you, there’s a time limit, a timeframe that generally every company gives you to say like, here’s when that money can be yours. Some companies, you are vested a hundred percent from the start. Other companies, like I told you with the charter school that I worked at, it took us three years to be vested.
The reason that’s important to know is if you are in a situation where you are looking at changing jobs, I want you to know like if I work two more months, am I going to be able to take money with me? Like I don’t want you to leave money on the table and be unaware of it. And I’ve had conversations with people in my life that were unaware of when they were going to be vested. I worked at another school and we had a pension. I think it took like five years for us to be vested. I only worked there for a year, but I was very aware, like I was okay with the opportunity cost of not being vested. But had I been at a company for let’s say 30 months, 36 months, because we’re talking about three years, I would’ve been really bummed. I probably would’ve figured out how can I stay here for another six months so I can take the thousands of dollars that this company has given me, with me? So that’s just another thing that I always want you to know is what is the vesting period at work?
Once again, you can ask HR about that vesting period, but just know it, especially if you’re someone who hops around from job to job. Just know that you may not be taking money with you in the way that you think you are, or getting the employer match the way that you think you are because of the vesting period. And also one more push for retirement here, is check your retirement statements. I want you to make sure that as you go into 2025, that you are not just contributing to your retirement, but that your retirement funds are not actually sitting in cash in your retirement account. So open up your statement, look and make sure that they are like actually invested in some type of fund. This is another conversation that you could have. If your 401k contributions are managed by like Hartford, fidelity, Vanguard, whoever the provider is at your company, you can call, have this conversation with them if you don’t understand some of the language that’s on those statements, to understand whether or not your money is sitting there in cash.
Another great way to see if it’s sitting there in cash you should be seeing that you have month over month return increases or decreases because your money would be in the market. So do that to make sure that you are taking advantage of new years of money moves with your retirement. Number three, this is for everybody who has money that you are saving. We are still in an economy where high yield savings accounts are beneficial. If you have money sitting at your bank and it is in savings, I want you to open up your bank account statement and I want you to look at how much interest did you get on your account on December 31st or January 1st. If you only got two or 3 cents, you are not in a high yield savings accounts. There are so many high yield savings accounts that you can take advantage of. You literally can just type in high yield savings accounts. But a high yield savings account is, right now, the rates are at about 4%.
Some of them are at like 4.5% and some of them might be at like 3.5%. But I want you to move your savings to high yield savings accounts. Even if you are only have $500 saved, you could be earning interest on that $500 and it not just be sitting there and not earning any interest. What’s happening here is you could be earning, especially when you have $10,000, you could be earning $20 or $30 a month on that cash that you have sitting in your savings account if it’s actually in a high yield savings account. So if moving your money to a high yield savings account, if that’s been like on your to-do list, please, please, please do that. I have so many clients that come to me. They may have come into some money for whatever reason or they’ve been actually really good at saving and the opportunity they’re missing out on is that their money is actually not earning them interest.
So I really love Capital One. It’s one that I always suggest to clients because they also can open up different accounts. They don’t have any fees, it’s all online, and they can also put syncing funds there. But like I said, you can go online and put in high yield savings account. You can even look and ask if your credit union or your bank has an option, so you don’t have to open up a new account, but whatever. And wherever you choose to open up an account, please just make that something that you do this week. Don’t wait on that because you’re literally losing free money just by not doing that.
Fourth thing that I want you to do, I want you to check your tax withholdings. If you are someone who gets a refund back, that means that you are overpaying the government. You’re giving the government a loan. I personally like to have a $0 return. The reason I like a $0 return is because I know how to manage my money and because I know how to manage my money, I can be saving that 2 or $300 a month that I’m getting back in a return. And so especially when I was a W2 employee, I was always trying to get my return to zero because I wanted more money in my paycheck month to month. If you are someone who owes money, once again, not bad, it just means you’re underpaying your taxes. And if you’re underpaying your taxes, you just need to make sure you’re saving money so you can pay your taxes.
But one of the easiest ways to just make sure that you are withholding enough, whether you are someone who overpays or underpays, is to actually do a tax withholding calculators. So go to the IRS. If you go to my show notes, it’ll be in the show notes. But if you go to the IRS website, they will walk you through your withholdings to make sure that you actually have the correct withholdings on your paycheck. This is something that I also love to do, as we’re a couple paycheck cycles into the year because you actually know where you’re landing with your numbers. You can check it at the beginning of the year. You can also check it in the middle of the year to make sure that you know you’re in the right place in terms of your withholdings. But it’s something I always did when I was employed because I always wanted to make sure that I was in that sweet spot.
And if you are overpaying and you’re getting a refund, imagine what you could do with an extra 2 or $300 a month. You could be accelerating your debt payoff. You could be accelerating your savings goals. Any of those things, like you this year could be responsible enough to manage those things on your own. And for the last money tip of this year, I want you to make it a point this month in the next week, I want you to negotiate and or price shop for your most common things that you’re paying for. So I want you to negotiate or price shop for your auto insurance, your home insurance, your internet and your cell phone. These are four of the most common things that I see with my clients where they are overpaying. I pay $40 a month guys for my internet and some of you are out there paying $80 a month for internet.
You don’t need to be paying $80 a month for internet. You just got to call and make sure your company is actually that you are getting the best deal. So imagine you paying $80 every single month. I’m paying $40 every single month. That is almost $500 a year difference. $500 a year, you might be thinking, oh, whatever, I’m going to spend it in some other way. No, $500 a year is also $500 that could be in that high-yield savings account, that could be turning into $1000 within a year and a half. So it’s very, very, very important that you go through and you price shop and you negotiate auto insurance, home insurance, your internet, your cell phone, because those are oftentimes the bills that we just have on autopilot and we feel like we have to pay whatever they tell us we have to pay.
But those are the most oftentimes, excuse me, where you can be saving money and those savings and the differences that you actually will find out that are available to you, put those differences towards savings. So if you get your internet down from $80 to $40, I want you to put that $40 towards your emergency fund, especially if you’re in a place where you’re like, Hey, I can’t save months a month. That right there is an opportunity for you to start saving. So like I said, I wanted to just give you some quick hits for the new year, five money moves that you can be making to get you off to a jumpstart. So thank you so much for tuning in, and I look forward to talking to you next week. Have a great week.
Outro: Thank you so much for listening to Money Files. If you’re ready to take the next step to reach your financial goals, head to www.wealthovernow.com/appointment and let’s get started.